This paper describes the noun class system of Sl, a Na-Togo, Kwa (Niger-Congo) language spoken in the Volta Region of Ghana. As shown in this paper, Sl hasa noun class system with an equal number of singular and plural classes that are paired inirregular ways. The singular-plural pairs are referred to as genders. Nouns normally agreewith certain modifiers within the noun phrase. The agreement targets are determiners,numerals, interrogative pronouns and some adjectives. Outside the noun phrase, nounclasses may be indexed on the verb to signal long distance anaphora, a strategy thatspeakers rarely use. The paper provides a detailed account of possible semantic andcultural motivations for the assignment of nouns to a particular gender and/or class.

2.

Agbetsoamedo, Yvonne

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics. University of Ghana.

This paper discusses standard negation in Sɛlɛɛ. Sɛlɛɛ is a Ghana-Togo Mountain (GTM) Language of the Kwa group of the Niger Congo family. Standard negation is the negation of declarative verbal clauses. Different strategies are used in Sɛlɛɛ to negate declarative verbal main clauses depending on the tense and aspect category of the verb. The basic negation strategy used in standard negation is tonal alternation, with or without other negation markers. The other strategies are the use of portmanteau morphemes, affixes and vowel lengthening. Interestingly, in one and the same tense paradigm, different persons can select different negation strategies. There is syncretism among the 1st person singular forms of the negative recent past, the negative habitual and the negative perfect.

3.

Agbetsoamedo, Yvonne

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics. University of Ghana, Ghana.

This talk deals with the conceptualisation of temperature in some of the Ghanaian languages as reflected in their systems of central temperature terms, such as hot, cold, to freeze, etc. We will discuss these systems in the light of a large-scale cross-linguistic collaborative project, involving 35 researchers (including the present authors) and covering more than 50 genetically, areally and typologically diverse languages (Koptjevskaja-Tamm ed. 2015). The key questions addressed here are how the different languages carve up the temperature domain by means of their linguistic expressions, and how the temperature expressions are used outside of the temperature domain. Languages cut up the temperature domain among their expressions according to three main dimensions: TEMPERATURE VALUES (e.g., warming vs. cooling temperatures, or excessive heat vs. pleasant warmth), FRAMES OF TEMPERATURE EVALUATION (TACTILE, The stones are cold; AMBIENT, It is cold here; and PERSONAL-FEELING, I am cold), and ENTITIES whose “temperature” is evaluated. Although the temperature systems are often internally heterogeneous, we may still talk about the main temperature value distinctions for the whole system. The Ghanaian languages favour the cross-linguistically preferred two-value systems, with water often described by a more elaborated system. An interesting issue concerns conventionalisation and frequency of expressions with a primary meaning outside of the temperature domain, for temperature uses. For instance, the conventionalised expressions for talking about ‘warm/hot’ in Ewe involve sources of heat (‘fire’) and bodily exuviae (‘sweat’). The Ghanaian languages often manifest numerous extended uses of their temperature terms. However, strikingly, none of them conforms to one of the most widely quoted conceptual metaphors, “affection is warmth” (Lakoff & Johnson 1999:50), which is also true for many other languages in (West) Africa and otherwise.

5.

Agbetsoamedo, Yvonne

et al.

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics. University of Ghana, Ghana.

Di Garbo, Francesca

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

This paper investigates the encoding of temperature in Sɛlɛɛ, a Niger-Congo language of the Kwa group, spoken in Ghana. The lexicon of temperature in Sɛlɛɛ consists of six central and two non-central temperature terms, distributed among the word classes of nouns, adjectives and verbs. The grammatical constructions associated with temperature evaluation vary according to the word-class status of each temperature term and its contexts of use. The distribution of the different grammatical constructions according to different types of temperature evaluation is discussed in the paper. Metaphorical uses of temperature-related terms are also discussed in the context of neighbouring and highly related languages. Finally, special patterns of temperature evaluation in connection with water are surveyed.

This paper discusses the possible semi-creole status of Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese and questions some of the literature on semi-creoles in general. It presents some differences between Brazilian Vernacular Portuguese and creole languages and makes a revision of the semi-creoles. Finally, it proposes new delimitations for the semi-creole concept.

9.

Andersson, Stina

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

A high proportion of repetitions is one of the distinctive features of child-directed speech (CDS). Research has shown that the percentage of repetitions in CDS varies over time depending on the age of the child. In addition, it is suggested that repetitions in CDS correlate with child language development. The aim of the study was to investigate the possible variations over time in the percentage of repetitions in CDS during the child’s first year, and to try to find a connection between repetitions and the child’s language development. Repetitions in parent speech in ten parent-child dyads as the children were 3, 6, 9 and 12 months old were investigated quantitatively. Exact and varying self-repetitions and exact and varying repetitions of the child’s utterances were investigated and compared to the same children’s linguistic level at 18 months of age. The results showed that the percentage of exact self-repetitions was more than 30 percent lower at the age of 12 months than at 3, 6 and 9 months of age. The total percentage of repetitions of the child’s utterances increased more than four times from 3 to 12 months of age. A connection was found between the repetitions during the child’s first year and the child’s language development, indicating that a low percentage of exact self-repetitions at 6 to 9 months of age correlated with a high vocabulary at 18 months of age. A link between the expressive language of the child and the repetitions in parents’ speech was suggested.

The languages spoken on northern Halmahera and surrounding small islands constitute a group of related ‘Papuan’ languages called North Halmahera. They are also, together with other Papuan and Austronesian languages, included in a proposed sprachbund which is called East Nusantara. Neuter gender and numeral classifiers have both been proposed to characterize the sprachbund. Consequently,an investigation of the noun categorisation systems in the North Halmahera languages, which is the subject of this study, can be of interest for the characterization of the sprachbund. The method for the investigation is to search for information about seven languages in existing grammatical descriptions, complemented with information which can be culled from published texts in the languages. There are mainly two categorisation systems in all the investigated languages: genders and numeral classifiers. The numerals often contain fossilized prefixes. Among the numeral classifiers, the human classifiers are special because of their origin from pronominal undergoer prefixes and the limitations of its use in some languages. Except in West Makian, there is a default classifier and a classifier for trees, and secondarily for houses, in all languages. A classifier for two-dimensional objects is also quite common. The other classifiers are used with a very limited number of nouns.

In creolist circles, there has been a long-standing debate whether creoles differ structurally from non-creole languages and thus would form a special class of languages with specific typological properties. This debate about the typological status of creole languages has severely suffered from a lack of systematic empirical study. This paper presents for the first time a number of large-scale empirical investigations of the status of creole languages as a typological class on the basis of different and well-balanced samples of creole and non-creole languages. Using statistical modeling (multiple regression) and recently developed computational tools of quantitative typology (phylogenetic trees and networks), this paper provides robust evidence that creoles indeed form a structurally distinguishable subgroup within the world's languages. The findings thus seriously challenge approaches that hold that creole languages are structurally indistinguishable from non-creole languages.

For the purposes of computational dialectology or other geographically bound text analysis tasks, texts must be annotated with their or their authors' location. Many texts are locatable but most have no ex- plicit annotation of place. This paper describes a series of experiments to determine how positionally annotated microblog posts can be used to learn location indicating words which then can be used to locate blog texts and their authors. A Gaussian distribution is used to model the locational qualities of words. We introduce the notion of placeness to describe how locational words are.

We find that modelling word distributions to account for several locations and thus several Gaussian distributions per word, defining a filter which picks out words with high placeness based on their local distributional context, and aggregating locational information in a centroid for each text gives the most useful results. The results are applied to data in the Swedish language.

15.

Bergqvist, Henrik

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

The paper analyzes a form of epistemic marking in Kogi (Arwako-Chibchan) that positions information between the speech-participants from the perspective of the speaker. This form of epistemic marking is tentatively labeled “complex epistemic perspective” and is found with five prefixes that attach to the auxiliary verb. Relevant meaning contrasts are between speaker-perspective and addressee-perspective forms, which may in turn be separated into symmetric and asymmetric forms that signal shared and exclusive knowledge access. The meaning dimension of knowledge access is also subject to a private/public distinction that parallels the notion of “territory of information” (Kamio 1997; Heritage 2012) where information may belong more to one of the speech participants than the other. The analyzed forms thus share a core function in specifying two simultaneous perspectives as part of the referential ground (e.g. Hanks 1990; 2009). The paper builds on first-hand data collected in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta region of northern Colombia and offers the first comprehensive analysis of epistemic marking in the language.

This paper discusses forms of epistemic marking that instantiate multiple perspective constructions (see Evans 2005). Such forms express the speaker’s and the addressee’s simultaneous epistemic perspectives from the point of view of the speaker, crucially relying on the assumptions of the speaker with regard to the addressee’s knowledge. The analysis of forms considers established semanto-pragmatic concepts, such as semantic scope, mitigation strategies and communicative intention (as marked by sentence-type) in the exploration of forms. In addition, the notion of knowledge asymmetry is discussed alongside the concepts of epistemic status and stance as tools for a semantic analysis of investigated forms

The paper describes epistemic marking in Ika (Arwako-Chibchan, Colombia) and proposes an analysis in terms of a typologically unusual pattern called conjunct/disjunct, which has been attested for a small number of Asian and South American languages. Canonically, conjunct occurs with first person subjects in statements and with second person in questions, as opposed to any other combination of subject and sentence-type, which is disjunct. The pattern found in Ika both conforms to expectations and, at the same time, contributes to a more nuanced analysis of the functional motivations of the conjunct/disjunct pattern. In Ika, conjunct marking encodes the speaker's direct access to an event that involves either (or both) of the speech participants. In addition, conjunct/disjunct marking interacts predictably with a second set of epistemic markers that encode asymmetries in the epistemic authority of the speaker and the addressee. The analysis builds on first-hand data but remains tentative, awaiting further investigation.

The paper argues for a view of evidentials as a type of shifter and outlines a theory of reference for evidentials that separates the configuration of the ground from the relational axis, as well as the alignment between ground and figure. The paper also evaluates a proposal by Kockelman (2004) that draws on Jakobson’s notion of “event type” and Goffman’s “speaker roles” to suggest an existing analogy between “commitment events” for modals and “source events” for evidentials. The scope properties of ‘factual’ forms in both systems notably constitute a formal difference between (epistemic) modality and evidentiality that cannot be accounted for solely by the referential properties of evidentials.

19.

Bergqvist, Henrik

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

The paper offers three illustrations of how the process of “intersubjectification” (Traugott & Dasher 2002) can be observed in the development of time deictics, person markers and sentence-type markers to encode aspects of the speaker’s assumptions concerning the addressee’s epistemic access to an event. First-hand data from Lakandon Maya (Yukatekan, Mexico), Kogi, and Ika (Arwako-Chibchan, Colombia) is discussed in order to offer a potentially more nuanced view of intersubjectification in language. While suggested in previous accounts of intersubjectification, the paper argues that this process of language change only involves categories and expressions defineable as “shifters” (Jespersen 1922), i.e. expressions that at the same time refer to aspects of the speech situation and the proposition.

20.

Bergqvist, Henrik

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

The paper focuses on inter-personal aspects of the context in the analysis of evidential and related epistemic marking systems. While evidentiality is defined by its capacity to qualify the speaker's indexical point of view in terms of information source, it is argued that other aspects of the context are important to analyze evidentiality both conceptually and grammatically. These distinct, analytical components concern the illocutionary status of a given marker and its scope properties. The importance of the hearer's point of view in pragmatics and semantics is well attested and constitutes a convincing argument for an increased emphasis on the perspective of the hearer/addressee in analyses of epistemic marking, such as evidentiality. The paper discusses available accounts of evidentials that attend to the perspective of the addressee and also introduces lesser-known epistemic marking systems that share a functional space with evidentiality.

The chapter focuses on the role of sentence type and subject person in accounting for egophoric marking in Ika, an Arwako-Chibchan language spoken in northern Colombia. Egophoric marking in Ika is only found in declarative clauses for which the speaker either assumes the role of epistemic authority, or where the speaker shares this role with the addressee. Interrogatives are treated as non-egophoric with all subject persons, as they do not encode the speaker’s assumptions about possible answers. This restriction, together with ones that pertain to predicate type and temporal frame of reference, point to epistemic/observational access as an important parameter in a system where public acts and personal attributes involving the speaker and/or the addressee are the only ones available for egophoric marking. As a complement to models of dialogical stance-taking (e.g. Du Bois 2007), the notion of “complex epistemic perspective” (see Bergqvist 2016) is introduced to identify which perspective configurations allow for egophoric marking.

22.

Bergqvist, Henrik

et al.

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

The present paper considers attested variation found in egophoric marking systems in order to discuss the role of such variation for the defining features of egophoric marking viz. a speech-act participant's epistemic authority subject to his/her involvement in an event. Austin Hale's (1980) pioneering description of egophoric marking in Kathmandu Newar (called conjunct/disjunct by Hale) has largely shaped our conception of what such systems look like, but in recent years, research on comparable systems has revealed that egophoric marking systems vary with respect to every purportedly defining feature of such systems. The one remaining variable that appears constant is the epistemic authority of the speech-act participants. When attempting to analyze and compare egophoric marking, one should consider all relevant cross-linguistic variation in order to determine what features are defeasible, and which ones are not. In this paper we explore the range of participant-roles that can be associated with egophoric marking focusing on secondary egophoric markers that map onto undergoers, affected participants, and the attitudes of the speech-act participants. It will become clear that these less prototypical instances of egophoric marking bridge such systems to a seemingly unrelated grammatical constructions, known as ethical datives.

In this paper, I will dicuss positive present tense forms in spoken Khalkha Mongolian. Khalkha is analyzed to have five non-finite aspect markers, the Progressive, Continuative, Habitual, Perfect, and Prospective. They mainly combine with the three suffixes ‑n, ‑aa and ‑dag. On its own, ‑n expresses an instantiated potential or neutral future and ‑aa combines epistemic possibility and resultativity. In combination with aspect markers, though, they express the evidential value of direct vs. indirect perception. As the resultant state of a perfect can be perceived directly, the division runs between direct sensual perception of the event and an event inferred from direct sensual perception vs. events that are concluded from assumptions, hearsay, and previous perception. The suffix ‑dag expresses habitual and generic semantics. It is most commonly used on its own, but can also take other aspect markers into its scope, e.g. expressing a habitually ongoing event. Next to its main use, it is even used to refer to mono-occasional events that diverge from what the speaker perceives as the normal course of events. In addition, absolute-final and other uses of the participle ‑h and final uses of the converb ‑aad are discussed.

In this paper, the meaning and use of the evidential particle bilee and its shortened derived form lee in Khalkha Mongolian are investigated. In indicatives, bilee is used to indicate one's own recollection. Simple past is formed together with the past inferential -j. Similarly, with a hortative mood bilee indicates the recollection of one's mental state. Both confirmation and surprise can be found as connotations, but the notion of surprise even appears to have grammaticalized into the more specific construction -na lee which either expresses surprise or is used to beg for attention. In questions, bilee can both express that one has witnessed, but cannot recall a given event, or an event that the addressee is presumed to remember. With the imperfective -dag, bilee can sometimes induce mono-occasional readings, but these are even possible with -dag alone or most commonly with -dag baijee.

The basic past tense suffixes in spoken Khalkha are ‑sɑ̆ŋ, -ɮɑ, -tʃe and the peripheral -w. The basic opposition is between established knowledge (‑sɑ̆ŋ) and non-established (mostly new) knowledge, which is then further differentiated into firsthand (-ɮɑ) and non-firsthand sources (‑tʃe). This adds the factor “time of acquisition” to “source of information.” However, vivid recollection and deferred realization allow for using ‑ɮɑ and -tʃe, respectively. Additionally, -ɮɑ is used to establish a fictive scenario in discourse. In the corpus, past ‑sɑ̆ŋ is thrice as frequent as past -ɮɑ and -tʃe combined and due to its opposition to the latter seems to acquire a connotation of factual, reliable information. In declaratives, ‑w accounts for just 0.7% of past tense uses. It is used for events that surprised the speaker in the past. In questions, -tʃe is used to ask the hearer to give an answer based on inference. In self-directed discourse, -ɮɑ is used by a speaker who tries to remember something she once knew, irrespective of whether this knowledge was acquired as firsthand knowledge or not.

All past markers have future uses. For an event for which the speaker has sensory or internal evidence (including when the speaker refers to her own intentions), -ɮɑ is fairly common. Clues as to whether a future or past interpretation hold are mostly syntactical, but stative aktionsart or the presence of the boundary-actualizing marker -tʃʰ- restrict the interpretation to the past. ‑ɮɑ can be used in questions about the future in which case the speaker seems to motivate her question on the basis of a presumption based on firsthand evidence. The morphological form of -ɮɑ in such contexts is different from the form used in past questions. ‑tʃe can be used when a future event is inferred, and ‑sɑ̆ŋ marks it as inevitable. Both are exceedingly rare in future contexts, so that they presumably only work in a salient future context. Future ‑w expresses preventive warnings.

29.

Brosig, Benjamin

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

This paper provides an overview of the linguistic properties of temperature terms in Khalkha Mongolian. It begins with a general overview of the temperature vocabulary, which is most elaborated in relation to coldness. It then considers in closer detail the application of these terms to tactile, ambient and personal-feeling temperature domains, and the terms' metaphoric extensions. The paper continues by investigating different ways of expressing degrees of temperature adjectives within a morphological system of intensification and attenuation. Finally, the syntax of temperature terms is discussed.

This paper contains an analysis of aspect, tense and evidentiality in Middle Mongol. This language has a fairly complex aspectual system, consisting of mostly periphrastic constructions built up from converbal, participial and final suffixes, and two different stative copula verbs. These express progressivity, habituality, genericity, perfectivity, perfect and resultativity on the present and past tense level. Present progressivity and resultativity can both be expressed by two different constructions that differ by their aspectual scope and/or actional properties. The three past tense suffixes mark factual, firsthand and secondhand information. This evidential trichotomy is restricted to the perfective aspect, while all other aspectual past tense markers only receive firsthand or secondhand marking. No aspectual distinctions seem to be made in the future, though both the future participle and the resultative participle can form contrafactual constructions.

34.

Brosig, Benjamin

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

The tense-aspect system of Khorchin Mongolian2014In: On diversity and complexity of languages spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia / [ed] Pirkko Suihkonen, Lindsay J. Whaley, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014, p. 1-66Chapter in book (Refereed)

Abstract [en]

Khorchin, a Mongolian dialect spoken in eastern Inner Mongolia, has a tense-aspect system slightly simpler than Middle Mongol and considerably simpler than Central Mongolian dialects (Khalkha, Chakhar). While it can express the time stability of ongoing events with many nuances, present habitual and generic events are not distinguished. The existence of a present perfect category is doubtful, but in any case it doesn’t extend to the past as participle-copula-combinations are impossible. Evidentiality was lost in the central verbal system, but a non-obligatory quotative/hearsay marker exists. This article is an attempt to fit these phenomena into a coherent system of tense, aspect and related notions and to explore some of its diachronic implications.

In this paper, we investigate frequency and duration of signs and parts of speech in Swedish Sign Language (SSL) using the SSL Corpus. The duration of signs is correlated with frequency, with high-frequency items having shorter duration than low-frequency items. Similarly, function words (e.g. pronouns) have shorter duration than content words (e.g. nouns). In compounds, forms annotated as reduced display shorter duration. Fingerspelling duration correlates with word length of corresponding Swedish words, and frequency and word length play a role in the lexicalization of fingerspellings. The sign distribution in the SSL Corpus shows a great deal of cross-linguistic similarity with other sign languages in terms of which signs appear as high-frequency items, and which categories of signs are distributed across text types (e.g. conversation vs. narrative). We find a correlation between an increase in age and longer mean sign duration, but see no significant difference in sign duration between genders.

There is no description in the Swedish grammar regarding how adjectives can be reinforced with prefixes, also known as intensifiers. Research shows that this phenomenon have recieved greater attention in other languages. The purpose of this study was to describe and map the use of prefix reinforcements, and see if any patterns or rules could be found. The quantitative research is based on statistical data collected from informal blog texts in two Swedish corpora. Adjectives on two types of mood, solid and temporary, as well as positive and negative, were investigated. The results showed that some types were more inclined to take reinforcements than others. Temporary adjectives took on more than solid ones, negative more than positive, as well as the short and frequent adjectives where more often reinforced than the longer and uncommon ones

Organizing this conference would of course not have been possible without our funding agencies Vetenskapsrådet and Riksbankens Jubiléumsfond. We would like to thank Francisco Lacerda, Head of the Department of Linguistics, and the Departmental Board for agreeing to host WILD this year. We would also like to thank the administrative staff for their help and support in this undertaking, especially Ann Lorentz-Baarman and Linda Habermann.

A central methodological issue in language typology is sampling – how to choose a representative set of languages for a typological investigation. Most proposed typological sampling methods are a priori in the sense that they are based on assumed, rather than observed, effects of biasing factors – such as genealogical and areal proximity.The advent of the World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) creates for the first time a chance to attempt a posteriori sampling. The basic idea is to create a sample by

removing from the set of available languages one member of each pair of languages whose typological distance – as defined in terms of the features in WALS – does not reach a predefined threshold. In

this way, a sample of 101 languages was chosen from an initial set of the 222 languages that are best represented in WALS.The number of languages from different macroareas in this sample can be taken as an indication of the internal diversity of the area in question.Two issues are discussed in some detail: (i) the high diversity of the indigenous languages of the Americas and the tendency for these to be underrepresented by previous sampling methods; (ii) the extreme areal convergence of Mainland South East Asian languages. It is concluded that areal factors cannot be neglected in typological sampling, and that it must be questioned whether the creation of elaborate sampling algorithms makes sense.

This rather programmatic paper discusses the use of parallel corpora in the typological study of grammatical categories. In the author’s earlier work, tense-aspect categories were studied by means of a translational questionnaire, and “cross-linguistic gram-types” were identified through their distribution in the questionnaire. It is proposed that a similar methodology could be applied to multilingual parallel corpora. The possibility of identifying grammatical markers by word-alignment methods is demonstrated with examples from Bible texts.

43.

Dahl, Östen

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

The paper discusses the relationship between cross-linguistic differences in grammatical resources and linguistic complexity. It is claimed that Sirionó (Tupí-Guaraní) lacks syntactic coordination as in English John and Mary are asleep. Instead, Sirionó employs a number of different strategies – the ‘with’ strategy, the list strategy, and the ‘also’ strategy – to make up for this. It is argued that one or more of these strategies may serve as a diachronic source of syntactic coordination. The development of syntactic coordination in a language exemplifies condensation processes in grammaticalization and increases complexity in the sense that a certain type of complex syntactic structure is introduced, and makes it possible to express in one syntactic unit what previously needed two or more.

44.

Dahl, Östen

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

This book looks at some phenomena within the grammar of the noun phrase in a group of traditional North Germanic varieties mainly spoken in Sweden and Finland, usually seen as Swedish dialects, although the differences between them and Standard Swedish are often larger than between the latter and the other standard Mainland Scandinavian languages. In addition to being conservative in many respects – e.g. in preserving nominal cases and subject-verb agreement – these varieties also display many innovative features. These include extended uses of definite articles, incorporation of attributive adjectives, and a variety of possessive constructions. Although considerable attention has been given to these phenomena in earlier literature, this book is the first to put them in the perspective of typology and grammaticalization processes. It also looks for a plausible account of the historical origin of the changes involved, arguing that many of them spread from central Sweden, where they were later reverted due to the influence from prestige varieties coming from southern Scandinavia.

47.

Dahl, Östen

Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics, General Linguistics.

Most treatments of temporal semantics start out from the conception of time as a line stretching from the past into the future, which is then populated with eventualities or situations. This paper explores how time can be seen as emerging from the construction of representations of reality in which the basic building blocks are static—i.e., timeless—representations, which are connected to each other by events that are transitions between them and that create an ordering which can be understood as temporal. This connects to von Wright’s “logic of change” and the “hybrid semantics” suggested by Herweg and Löbner. In this context, telicity is seen as the capacity of events, or of the predicates that express them, to “create time” in the sense of defining a before and an after. The basic elements of the model are global states, which are timeless taken in isolation but are connected by transition events, which transform one global state into another and thereby define the temporal relationships between them. Transition events, corresponding to Vendlerian achievements, represent simple changes which are then the basis for all other constructs in the model, most notably delimited states, Vendlerian activities (atelic dynamic eventualities), and accomplishments (telic non-punctual eventualities), but also time points and intervals. Transition events are further instrumental in constructing narrative structures and are responsible for narrative progression.